Teach English in Tongyu Zhen - Jinzhong Shi

Everyday people use language to communicate with each other, which makes it the key for communications. There are more than 100 languages in the world and each country has its own. When people travel abroad as tourists or as employees, they need to know the language, but to know every country’s native language is impossible, so the English language was accepted as the international one for worldwide usage. In countries where English is not the native language it is usually considered as the preferred 2nd language of choice to communicate between tourists, foreigners and natives. The native language is the very first language that a baby hears when he is born. His parents, grandparents talk to the baby by using this language which causes full involvement in the language world. Even though it is unfamiliar and unknown sounds to a baby, he still tries to understand it. Eventually he starts to repeat words after his parents and understands if he says something wrong or correct by their mimics and reaction. He does it because it allows him to communicate and respond back to them, to ask them what he wants and so on. In this period grammar plays no essential role, more over it is not taught at all. Structure of the sentences is not clear, sometimes chaos, but vocabulary does increase day by day. The baby is exposed to technology like television in his native language, to the books which is read to him. He is always in constant immersion of his native language. Meanwhile his 1st language is fully developing, we cannot say the same about a 2nd language, which in this case we are referring to the English language. Children do not hear this language until they start to go to a kindergarten or a school. Why does it happen so? The answer is simple, not all parents know English language or use it every day. They might use it professionally but not so much at home. So what does happen to the 2nd language when children hear it for the first time? For them it might be the same unknown sound as it was their 1st language, nevertheless if they were exposed to native one all 24 hours, with the second one they are exposed only for couple hours in a day. Acquisition with English language takes time and for each age there is a different approach. For instance, children in the age bracket of 4-6 years old, it’s easier for them to learn the language in games or songs with rhymes, during this period only their vocabulary does increase, and grammar is not important. Young learners at the age of 6 and higher already have some language base and could start learning or developing a 2nd language base. Why the 1st language’s acquisition is easier than the 2nd one? Can we use the same method acquisition with the 2nd language? First of all, the 1st language is “mother tongue” . It is always present and practiced, everything that surrounds the baby like cartoon, movies and people are constantly speaking this language so it is easier to learn and to use for communication. Secondly, it is motivation: The child from the birth is motivated to use the 1st language, because no other can help him to speak to people around. Some teachers find the best way to teach English language to the children is to surround them with this language. The teacher prefers not to use native language in the classes, even though he knows it, he tries to avoid it. If a student does not understand a question, a word which was asked in the 2nd language, the teacher finds alternative ways or synonyms for the student to understand it. Unfortunately, it cannot work with all levels, as for children age of 4-6 years a teacher still needs to use native language to explain them the meaning of the words. It is more complicated, when we talk about young learner’s motivation. They have no purpose for themselves to learn the English language, but it is given as part of the subject at school, so they have to do it. For the students to be more involve with the second language and be motivated the teacher creates different activities, real situations for them to use it. Whereas with adults it is different, because most of the time they learn a second language for specific reasons, be it work or otherwise. When the students learn the English language, they always try to compare it to their 1st one’s Grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, which sometimes can cause a trouble in 2nd language acquisition, but it up to the teacher to avoid such kind of troubles. To take all above into consideration it can be added, that 1st language is acquired language and the 2nd one is learned one.